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February 24, 2009

It is almost twenty-five years ago that I was writing a doctoral thesis on Martin Buber (1878-1965). There is little doubt that Buber was one of the most influential Jews of the 20th century. More than 2000 people turned up for his funeral. Buber was a leading Biblical scholar, philosopher, political theorist and activist.

Buber was a German Jew who argued strongly for the revival of cultural Zionism but opposed political Zionism. Buber challenged, in 1921, Chaim Weizmann (President of the Zionist Organization) for doing too little to foster good relations with the Arabs. Buber’s classic work, I and Thou, was published in 1922, and in many ways this wise missive anticipated the way the Nazis would treat the Jews (as objects to be exterminated) and the way Jews would treat the Palestinians. Buber fled Germany in 1938, and settled in Palestine where he was given a distinguished teaching position at the Hebrew University.

February 18, 2009

It is a rare day, indeed, when C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) and Thomas Merton (1915-1968) are breathed in the same breath. There are many who bow low to Lewis, and many others genuflect to Merton. Both men, for different reasons, have an ample following. Is it even possible to think of these men as having anything in common?

We do know that Lewis was quite fond of Merton. John Brown did a thesis at Union Seminary on race relations in the 1960s, and in a letter to Merton, he had this to say. “I am rather ashamed to admit that you are the first Roman Catholic writer that I have read seriously, and then only on the recommendation of C. S. Lewis, who in a letter not long before he died, stated that he had discovered your writing, and found it quite the best spiritual writing he had come across in a long time”. Merton replied to Brown (August 7 1968). “Thanks for your kind letter. I am certainly happy to think that so sound a judge as C.S. Lewis found something to like in my writing” (The Road to Joy: p. 369) . Merton’s interest in Lewis, though, can be traced back to a book review he did of The Personal Heresy in 1939.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You have only to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver, from Owls and Other Fantasies, poems and essays, Beacon
Press, 2003.